Actors Maria Giere marquis, left, Cooper Carlson and El Beh, foreground left, pose for a picture with play writer Anthony Clarvoe, center back, and director Jill MacLean, right, at Boxcar Theatre for the play "Cello" opening on April 22, 2012 in San Francisco, Calif.

Photo: Siana Hristova, The Chronicle

Actors Maria Giere marquis, left, Cooper Carlson and El Beh,...

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Play writer Anthony Clarvoe, center, poses for a picture with the actors Cooper Carlson, left, Maria Giere Narquis, center left, and El Ben, at Boxcar Theatre for the play "Cello" opening on April 22, 2012 in San Francisco, Calif.

Photo: Siana Hristova, The Chronicle

Play writer Anthony Clarvoe, center, poses for a picture with the...

Image 3 of 3

Play writer Anthony Clarvoe poses for a picture with a cello at Boxcar Theatre for the play "Cello" opening on April 22, 2012 in San Francisco, Calif.

The Bay One Acts Festival, now in its 11th year, connects theater companies with playwrights and offers collaborators a chance to develop emerging voices and refine their work through readings and workshops. This year's festival offers 10 new plays - with more than 70 theater artists participating - including "Cello," a piece that was commissioned by the festival and penned by nationally renowned playwright, and San Francisco native, Anthony Clarvoe.

"BOA provides playwrights with the opportunity to build some theatrical muscle and see their work fully produced," says Jessica Holt, BOA's artistic director. "We are one of the only organizations that affords its playwrights the opportunity to see their plays up on their feet, fully rehearsed with full tech in such a short period of time. ... And (with Clarvoe), I loved the idea of bringing such an esteemed native son into the fold."

Glickman Award-winning Clarvoe has created a piece centered around a woman who is awakened by a nightmare that catapults her into her dark past. In the meantime, she is consoled by her well-meaning husband, and a cello provides the eerie soundtrack to her confusion, as well as the ghostly embodiment of the woman's sister.

The play's director, Jill MacLean, met Clarvoe through the Playwrights Foundation, where he is also the playwriting instructor in residence. When Holt approached MacLean to direct Clarvoe's piece, MacLean said yes "because I'm intrigued by his writing, and he's terrific to work with."

"It's kind of like my kids invited me to join their band," Clarvoe says. "When I moved back home to the Bay Area, the Playwrights Foundation invited me to try all these new things - teaching courses, mentoring younger writers, making pieces for the One-Minute Play Festival ... and to meet a new generation of young theater people."

Clarvoe's original piece was called "2 Dreams" and was written for December's San Francisco One-Minute Play Festival. It was inspired by a fragment of one of his dreams.

"I wanted the characters to have to confront whatever had evoked the dream without literally acting it out," he says. "It turned out the cello can voice every sound and emotion from the dream. What intrigued me were both the person emerging from sleep and the person with her, dealing with a big experience that she can't fathom and he didn't share."

Holt and other BOA staff had several conversations about the kind of work they wanted to produce that would fit within BOA's parameters, namely, "adventurous, muscular, largely nonrealistic work that focuses on language and action with minimal scenic considerations," Holt says. "Once I signed off on their ideas, they were free to create in the specific, ensemble-based collaborative modes of theater-making that define these respective companies."

BOA pivots around community and learning while showcasing local playwrights of all experience levels. For Clarvoe, whose career as a playwright has spanned decades, collaborating with BOA led him to reimagine his characters in important ways.

"I've always made my work at institutional theaters that cast a bunch of strangers from New York and L.A. and wherever," he says. "This piece and the festival are an expression of the talent and the aesthetics of the Bay Area. It's a great way to come home."

This article has been corrected since it appeared in print.

3 and 7 p.m. Sun. (The works are divided into two programs; "Cello" is part of Program 1.) Through May 12. $25-$45. Boxcar Theatre, 505 Natoma St., S.F. www.bayoneacts.org.